Largest abandoned cities in the world
Largest abandoned cities in the world!
We all expect our civilization to last. But if we look through history, empires come and go with great frequency. And when they fall only the ruins remain.
From Wild West Ghost Towns to Ancient Greek Metropolises, Here are the craziest abandoned cities in the world.
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1. Ordos City
Ordos City in China was once flush with cash and has been called one of the world’s largest abandoned cities.
In the early 2000s, a coal mining hype led the local government to invest money in urban development, hoping to create a new epicenter of culture, economy, and politics.
This Ordos new town is also known as “Kangbashi”. And it could hold 1 million people, and it is known for having massive abstract architecture projects, residential towers, and state-of-the-art sports venues.
The story started about 20 years ago, with the beginning of the great Mongolian coal rush. Private mining companies started to come into the green inter Mongolian steppe lands. They began to make enormous open cast holes in the ground.
Local farmers sold their lands to the miners and became instantly rich. A lot of job opportunities emerged. Huge coal truck convoys started to tear up the roads.
High property taxes and poor construction prevent people from settling in Ordos city. In 2016 around 100,000 thousand people lived and worked there. Yet, ⅔ of the city was empty.
Photographer, Raphael Olivier said, “The whole city feels like a post-apocalyptic space station straight out of a Sci-Fi movie.” He captured the city in a series titled “The Ordos, a failed utopia”.
2. Hashima
Hashima was abandoned in 1974 and left to be ruined. Decay, Storms, and time have resulted in collapsed buildings. It feels like a place where ghosts of the miners who used to live there are still inhabited. It is also one of the largest abandoned cities in the world.
It’s a fantastic place for an unbelievable place. It is a place like no other in the world. This tiny island was once home to 5259 people with the highest population density in history abruptly abandoned and left to the elements for decades.
At its peak, numerous families worked and lived within the seawall that encircles the small island. The mines had to be closed in 1974. After that, the island was abandoned. It was named as a UNESCO world heritage site in 2015.
3. Bodie state historic park
This is a genuine California gold-mining ghost town. Now Visitors can walk down the abandoned streets of this town. But once this town had a population of nearly 10,000 people.
The town is named for W.S Bodey who had discovered small amounts of gold in Hills North of Mono Lake.
In 1875, a mine cave revealed pay dirt which led to the purchase of the mine by the standard company in 1877. Thousands of people came to Bodie and transformed it from a town of a few dozen to a large town.
On a daily basis, miners would emerge from the mines and head for the bars in the red-light district to spend their earnings. The mixture of money, gold, and alcohol would sometimes prove fatal.
From 1877 to 1882 Bodie was a heavily crowded town. It had more than 35 million dollars in gold and silver. But today the gold mining days of California are a distinct memory with almost 200 abandoned wooden buildings in a state of decay to photograph and explore.
4. Pyramiden
At first glance, it looks like a great settlement with urban architecture consisting of apartment buildings made of brick or wood. But there is one thing missing. That is people.
Pyramiden was founded in Sweden in 1910. And it was sold to the Soviet Union in 1927. In the 1980s this mining community had more than 1,000 residents.
It was named after the pyramid-shaped mountain of the same name nearby. This city is now mostly visited by seagulls, polar foxes, and sometimes polar bears.
Tourists visit too. By boat in the summertime and by snowmobile in the wintertime to experience this amazing place.
The Russian state-owned mining company called Trust Arktikugol closed the mine in Pyramiden on April 1st in 1998. After 53 years of continuous operations.
The falling price of coal, the difficulty, and the cost of extracting coal from the mountain, and the Russian air disaster at Operafjellet that claimed 141 lives, all contributed to the decision of closing the mine in Pyramiden.
5. Akarmara
Akarmara was once a buzzing coal mining town. But now it is overtaken by trees. It is in Abkhazia, a breakaway region on Georgia’s Black sea coast.
Wars and economic changes have emptied the town of 5,000 people who live there in the 1970s. Today, with only 35 residents left, the town belongs to the forest.
In the early 1990s, the siege of Tkvarcheli meant that effectively Akarmara was cut off from the rest of Abkhazia. Because there is only one main road in and out which cuts straight through to Tkvarcheli.
For 413 days, the town was cut off and relied on supplies being received by helicopters by Russian and separatist forces.
The siege of Tkvarcheli remains the biggest war trauma for a lot of Abkhazians. In the summer month, there is a steady stream of 4x4s with loud music taking tourists from the coast up into the hills to see Akarmara and the mines.
6. Houtouwan
On Shengshan island situated east of Shanghai, China, only a handful of people still live in a village that was once home to more than 2,000 fishermen.
Every day hundreds of tourists visit Houtouwan, making their way on narrow footpaths, passing crumbling houses overtaking by vegetation.
The remote village is one of more than 400 islands in the Shengsi archipelago. It was abandoned in the early 1990s as residents moved away, because of the problems with education and food delivery.
In 2002 the village was officially depopulated and merged into a nearby village. And decade after abandoning the village, empty houses in the ocean-facing cliffside village, some of them still furnished and have been taken over by a blanket of bush climbing plants.
7. Kolmanskop
In one part of the Namib Desert in South-Western Africa, lies the bones of a grand town. There we can find ornate buildings among the gentle curves of the sand drifts, rising to defy their desolate surroundings in exuding an air of quiet dignity.
The vastness of the lonely landscape makes the buildings look smaller and the sand seeks to hide the structures within itself. It is not until you approach the houses that their characteristic of German architecture featuring truncated roofs and unique windows could be appreciated.
In 1980, while Luderitz underwent an economic boom, the tourist potential of the ghost town was rediscovered and some houses were dug out of the sands again and were restored which are open for visitors.
8. Goldfield
This town can be found on a small hill between the Goldfield Mountains and the Superstition Mountains. Gold was discovered here in 1892 in the town and it quickly became to life.
The first official post office opened on October 7th in 1893 and new miners flooded in. Goldfield boomed alongside the supply of gold ore for 5 years. When the quality of the ore dropped miners started to move on.
The post office was discontinued on November 2nd, 1898, and Goldfield became a ghost town. Despite the presence of some miners who stubbornly tried to find a new vein of gold. Every effort was unsuccessful. But until the arrival of George Young, the secretary of Arizona and acting governor.
Young brought new mining methods and equipment and Goldfield slowly came back to life. Briefly, a new mill and cyanide plant helps retain workers. But the town became a ghost town for good in the mid-1920s. It still stands in its identical forms today.
9. Calico
On the long desert drive to Las Vegas, one of the most exciting places you can stop is the famous ghost town owned by Knott’s Berry Farm known as Calico ghost town.
This place is a great place to visit with your whole family to enjoy and explore the history of California.
You can take a ride through an old mine on a tram, pan for silver, take potshots in the shooting gallery, and camp overnight under the Calico hills.
In the general store on the main street, there are fat peppermints and candy cigarettes. In the recreated print shop, there is a friendly skeleton that wears an old-fashioned green visor, and wanted posters of men and women are displayed on the walls.
10. Craco
After surviving the Black Plague and bands of marauding thieves, for more than 1400 years, a landslide finally forced residents from Craco in 1991.
Considering the hillside villages’ long tenure. It’s amazing the residents were not forced out earlier by mother nature.
Craco was founded in the 8th century and was a brilliant survivor considering the volatile nature of the medieval period.
The village sits on a cliff 400 meters off of the ground. With panoramic views, the city center can easily be defended from the average barbarian horde.
Despite its advantages, Craco is at a serious disadvantage, exposed to the elements along with earthquakes and landslides, Craco finally caved in near the Millennium.
11. Roghudi Vecchio
In a way, they are greek ruins but you won’t find a temple to Apollo for urns pointed with striding athletes in the abandoned hillside village of Roghudi Vecchio.
The artifacts here include a pizza oven and coke bottles. Nonetheless, this town in Italy’s Aspromonte Mountains was found in the 11th century. From ancient times the roots of its former residents can be found.
For the past 50 years, the crumbling houses in Roghudi have been silent. Overharvesting of timber on some of Aspromonte’s slopes has led to erosion made worse by Calabria’s annual climatic cycle.
Punctuating the very dry summers, are occasional hard winter rainstorms, which can cause fierce flooding.
In the early 1970s, this town became uninhabitable due to a devastating flood. Almost all the residents left the village leaving behind a shell of a community that had endured a thousand years.
12. Burj Al Babas
Hundreds of chateau can be found abandoned at the Burj Al Babas luxury housing development in Central Turkey. This happened after its developer filed for bankruptcy.
Between Turkey’s biggest city Istanbul and in its capital Ankara the Burj Al Babas development contains 732 identical mini chateaus if it is completed.
It was begun in 2014 the hundreds of houses have been left in various states of completion since the dramatic collapse of the Turkish economy led developer Sarot Group to file for bankruptcy.
According to Bloomberg, the complex has debts of $27 million dollars. But the results are wild, with a seemingly endless sea of conical spires stretching as far as the eye can see.
13. Centralia
What does a town do when it has too much trash and nowhere to put it. In the case of Centralia, Pennsylvania, town officials decided to burn it. Starting in May 1962 just before the big memorial parade, the landfill blaze hit a live coal vein underground.
Nearly 60 years later the fire is still burning underneath the town. In the early 1980s, 12 years old Centralia resident Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole that appeared in his backyard. He was pulled out by his cousin. But it was discovered that the hot steam emanating from the hole contained a lethal level of Carbon Monoxide.
In the mid – 1980s the government provided more than $42 million to buy out and relocate Centralia’s remaining residents. With more than 1,000 people accepting the offer and 500 buildings being demolished.
To this date, the town is hazardous to visit and it remains abandoned.
14. Kelso
In 1905 Kelso was built specifically as a depot along the railroad line that runs between LA and Utah. And cut right through the middle of the Mojave Desert.
But the business was so strong that Kelso ended up becoming a real town. With a past office and in the 1940s a jail for drunkards.
The original simple train depot was replaced with a much larger one in 1925 that also functioned as a boarding house for railroad employees and a restaurant.
The depot officially closed in 1962 after mining dwindled and freight trains switched from steam to diesel.
Although the housing and dining facilities for crew members remained open until 1985. Now, Kelso depot has been preserved as a visitor center where you can explore historical exhibits in the former dormitory rooms, baggage room, and ticket office.
Grab some spare water and a hiking guide or a map in the bookstore before reading out to Kelso Dunes or any number of the cinder cones and lava flows.
15. UFO City
The Sanzhi UFO houses also known as the Sanzhi Pod houses or Sanzhi Pod City, were a set of abandoned pod-shaped buildings that resembled Futuro houses that prefabricated flying saucer-shaped houses designed by Matti Suuronen.
The buildings were planned to be torn down in late 2008 despite an online petition to retain one of the structures as a museum.
Demolition work on the site began on December 29th in 2008, with plans to redevelop the site into a tourist attraction and beach facilities.
So these are the largest abandoned cities in the world.